Defeat and Rupture

Manggagawa sa may Ilog Pasig (CJ Chanco, 2016)

After years of defeat, resistance becomes a kind of self-flagellation:

« we are powerless against the powerful, so let us turn against each other, let us beat ourselves to a pulp, then return to submission, put on the straitjacket of self discipline, and hope our gods look upon us with favour tomorrow, or the day after that, or, someday…when we are pure »

 

Kalayaan footbridge, near Ateneo de Manila University (CJ Chanco, 2016)

To a friend:  often it feels like we’re talking to a brick wall, as writers, artists, poets, journalists. Not least at times like these when the maddening crowd bays for more blood.

But the  struggle to articulate, to speak  — despite at times sounding like lone voices in the desert — is proof enough of the fact that the present order is far from legitimate. Thrumming beneath the surface of an apparent stasis is the possibility for radical turns in popular consciousness. We are only ahead, so to speak (and more often behind).

Despite our pretensions, we are only part of this story, often failing to grasp whether the shadows we see are the signs of  dusk or dawn, and often failing to find the words to describe adequately  the difference between both. We do not write the script. There is no script.

Trust that things, events, have a way of ‘rupturing’, in ways beautifully unexpected. The bullshit will unravel soon enough.

And one day we will find it in ourselves to say:

« Tatay, we are not children!
Master, we are not yours.
Ours is the land, the sunset, the hours, and the hope you’ve stolen from us. »

Urgent patience and radical ruptures

I read this piece this morning, by Edicio Dela Torre: « The noun, the driving force, is ”impatience.” So many changes cry out to be done, and sooner rather than later. That is the spirit of the slogan from the 70s, “Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa?” Or in more contemporary terms: “Now na!”

But if we want a real world strategy for change, our impatience needs to be modified by the adjective “patient.” Sheer will cannot overcome the truth that many changes can’t be rushed and forced. Or if forced will do a lot of harm, even if unintended. And will not be sustained. »

 [http://www.ediciodelatorre.com/leadership/roro-and-patient-impatience/]

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Part of me would like to believe that; the other half says what kind of patience and who are we waiting for, if not ourselves? Change also happens through radical rupture (as a friend pointed out to me once), which is the only kind of change that matters when time presses hard on us all and the world becomes, once more, malleable to hope. What matters is what comes after, when the heat of public anger bubbles over and is given vision, substance, and direction. Not least by those who have treasured the lessons of the past.

The future remains radically open, susceptible neither to force nor easy prediction. Patient rebuilding comes after. Many of us are missing that opportunity again.

« Patient impatience ». There is also urgent patience, even a revolutionary impatience:

“an active waiting, an urgent patience, an endurance and a perseverance that are the opposite of passive waiting for a miracle” (Bensaid)